Introduction

With the plethora of options available for PowerPoint to Flash conversion,
it's no longer an easy decision to decide upon one particular product. While
some of these products are free, others cost anywhere from a few dollars
to a few hundred. Then there are products that do just simple conversion
-- yet other create ready-to-use rich media output along with quiz features
and LMS integration. And then there are products that allow you to do this
conversion via full featured animation and video editing interfaces -- and
finally you could do the entire conversion manually -- that will of course
take a lot more time!

In the midst of this scenario, we were invited to review another product
of this genre -- this one is called PowerFlashPoint -- let's see how it fares.

Download and Installation

Download the installer from the link given above, run the setup routine
and follow the instructions. If you are using PowerPoint 2007, you'll end
up with a PowerFlashPoint tab on the Ribbon as you can see in Figure
1.

Figure 1: PowerFlashPoint tab on the Ribbon

All the options on the PowerFlashPoint tab are explained below:

Convert lets you convert the open PowerPoint presentations
to Flash.

Settings allows you to tweak the general, player and
output settings (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: PowerFlashPoint settings

Narration allows you to record and add narration on
any slide.

About comprises a group of options that provides help,
and info about the PowerFlahPoint add-in.

How PowerFlashPoint Fared?

This benchmark presentation had 20 slides with content of various types:
pictures, clip art, shapes, narration, music, Flash movies, videos, etc.
Each slide was given between 0 to 5 points each for a total of 100 points,
and 50 extra points were allotted to the program interface, support options,
output, PowerPoint 2007 compatibility, and pricing.

PowerFlashPoint scored a total of 104 points to get 69.3% ratings.

PowerFlashPoint fared very well with animation and pictures -- it also managed
embedded Flash movies on slides and videos well. However, it provided zero
support for transition sounds and narrations already inside PowerPoint slides
-- also text and shapes moved a wee bit from their original positions.

In all other areas, PowerFlashPoint did a good job. You can see the individual
scores for PowerFlashPoint on our FlashPPT
site.

Pricing and Support

Conclusion

PowerFlashPoint has its strong areas -- but it still needs to make two improvements:
first, it needs to support more of PowerPoint's nuances in the conversion
and they also need to take a look at their pricing -- $199 for a product
with so many limitations is far too much.